Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama will nominate John Brennan, his chief counterterrorism adviser, to be the next director of the CIA, a senior administration official said Monday.

Brennan, 57, has served as assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security since 2009.

Obama's announcement of Brennan's nomination to the CIA post will occur at 1 p.m. Monday, along with the nomination of former Sen.

Chuck Hagel to be the next secretary of defense, another senior administration official said.

Brennan has shaped the White House's strategy to aggressively pursue suspected terrorists -- dramatically escalating the use of armed unmanned aircraft, often referred to as drones -- and to kill them in the ungoverned territories of Pakistan and in Yemen.

He was also intimately involved in the run-up to the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound in May 2011.

If the Senate confirms the nomination, Brennan will replace retiredGen. David Petraeus, who stepped down from his job as CIA director in

November amid revelations that he had engaged in an extramarital affair with his biographer.

Michael Morell, a career intelligence officer who was serving as the spy agency's deputy director, has been acting CIA director since Petraeus' resignation.

Petraeus resigned on November 9 amid an FBI investigation into whether his biographer, Paula Broadwell, had inappropriate access to classified information.

A list of White House talking points obtained by CNN describes Brennan as a close adviser to the president who has led efforts to target al Qaeda's leadership.

Brennan also has a deep understanding the CIA, where he worked for decades, the talking points say. "He has no party affiliation, and has worked around the clock to protect our country."

Returning to the Central Intelligence Agency would be a homecoming of sorts for Brennan, who spent 25 years there distinguishing himself as a Mideast and terrorism expert.

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine navy officials said Monday a suspected American drone has been found floating in the ocean off a central province, prompting them to deploy a ship with ordnance experts after fishermen reported the object may have been a bomb.

The 3-meter (10-foot) orange BQM-74e drone marked "Navy" was found by a Filipino diver and fishermen off Masbate Island on Sunday and has been turned over to local navy authorities, Philippine navy officer Capt. Jason Rommel Galang said, adding it was not clear why the unmanned aerial vehicle ended up off Masbate.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Bettina Malone said efforts were under way to determine if the drone was one of those used in American military air target training exercises and why it was in the waters off Masbate, about 380 kilometers (235 miles) southeast of Manila. The type of drone found was not armed and not used for surveillance, she said.

Masbate is in a region where communist guerrillas have a presence. U.S. counterterrorism troops, who are barred from local combat, have used surveillance drones to help Filipino soldiers track down al-Qaida-linked extremists in the country's south. At least two U.S. drones have been reported to have crashed and were recovered by villagers in the past on southern Mindanao island.

personally...i would get all copy pasta over the war machine in general instead of choosing one facet of the problem like some college kid from politically correct university clambering for the next trendy cause to take up.

Several others have already madethis point, but it’s telling that Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense is being widely described as the controversial one, while John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director is seen as thoroughly uncontroversial.

Hagel is getting pilloried because of his supposed anti-Israel bent, conservative criticism of which has hijacked the airwaves. Meanwhile, Brennan’s reported support for Bush-era torture programs — which he’s denied — and his oversight of Obama’s drone program is causing barely a ripple, save for in rarefied precincts on the civil liberties left.

But the Brennan appointment creates an opportunity. What if Senators use his confirmation hearings to force a public debate about the legality and transparency of Obama’s drone strike program and the need for meaningful Congressional oversight of the program? The hearings could also initiate a conversation about the legacy of Bush era torture, other aspects of the Bush war on terror, and the areas of continuity between the two administrations on civil liberties issues.

The Obama administration is reportedly in discussions about developing a clear and transparent rationale for drone strikes, and the failure to do this continues to draw sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates. At the hearings, Brennan will hopefully be pressed to explain this rationale, and more broadly, what the administration will do, if anything, to strive for some kind of international consensus around drones and the rules of war in the 21st Century.

“We absolutely should have this debate,” Steve Clemons, a foreign policy expert at the New America Foundation, tells me. ”We still live with the legacy of the world that Dick Cheney and George Bush built — one that is not internationally sanctioned. One of the ways Obama and Brennan can restore America’s global leverage is to help lay out a blueprint for a new global social contract for a world with wars like those of today.”

Brennan, a career CIA official, will also be asked to detail the extent of his support for — or at least his failure to put a stop to — Bush era torture techniques. The extent of this support is disputed. Glenn Greenwald lays out the case for Brennan’s support for them, and for warrantless eavesdropping, right here; Scott Shane, meanwhile, reports that Brennan has denied these accusations and that he has since won some admiration from human rights advocates for arguing for the closing of Guantanamo. This will be hashed out at the hearings; John McCain, a longtime torture foe, said in a statement today that he intends to press Brennan to detail his role.

But beyond this, the hearings may be able to establish whether we see a real accounting into the legacy of Bush era torture programs. He’ll likely be pressed on how forthcoming he believes the agency should be when it comes to a massive report Senate Democrats have prepared examining those programs. The CIA needs to approve that report for release, with redactions; Brennan will be asked to detail how he’d handle it. “Will he assure us that he’s not going to stand in the way of the American people understanding what the U.S. government did when it engaged in torture, rendition, and secret prisons?” asks Laura Murphy, a senior official at the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with me.

“We still have the legacy of living in gray wars with gray rules,” Clemons says. He hopes Brennan’s nomination hearings will play a role in forcing a range of activities, from torture to drone strikes, out into the light.

I'll start listening more seriously to all this populist OUTRAGE about drone strikes just as soon as someone proposes a viable alternative for how to take out the most dangerous threats to the safety of the world in some other way.

I'll start listening more seriously to all this populist OUTRAGE about drone strikes just as soon as someone proposes a viable alternative for how to take out the most dangerous threats to the safety of the world in some other way.

Until then, I'm deaf to your words.

Those of us who believe decades of bad foreign/military policy have done as much as anything else to spur those threats might say that not creating a new generation of people who hate us by killing innocent children and trampling all over the sovereignty of other countries is a better way to protect us than what we're doing.

Plus, you know, extrajudicial assassination of American citizens is pretty Unfuckingconstitutional in my book.

I'll start listening more seriously to all this populist OUTRAGE about drone strikes just as soon as someone proposes a viable alternative for how to take out the most dangerous threats to the safety of the world in some other way.

Until then, I'm deaf to your words.

Someone argued in an another thread that sending troops is the way to go, because the cost of soldiers is less than the cost of the missiles.

No one said to stick heads in the sand. We might do better actually listening to why they despise us. But that would require facing the truth, and this nation has given up on that. We're right. Fuck you. We're the best. Do as we say.

No one said to stick heads in the sand. We might do better actually listening to why they despise us. But that would require facing the truth, and this nation has given up on that. We're right. Fuck you. We're the best. Do as we say.

I agree with this in general, but what truth are you discussing? The fact that we tend to be war mongers (in their eyes) or our freedoms?

I think it is the freedoms we have here. The military stuff just intensifies it.

Also, in one breath you say "no one said stick heads in the sand", but in the next you say "that would require facing the truth".

Isnt sticking your head in the sand a metaphor for "not facing the truth"?

They do not hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because we install bases on their lands, we over throw their elected officials and install dictators. We prop up dictators. We defend their sworn enemy in the region; Israel (and we do it lopsidedly at that) and we resource grab from them.

It has nothing to do with "our freedoms" (the irony being that we're not even a free society any more...not even close).

Sticking ones head in the sand generally means doing nothing and ignoring the problem. That's not what we're doing at all. We're active in hot guerilla war with these "terrorists".

No, dessert storm was only one of many, MANY conflicts we've participated in with the middle east. I'm sure it played its role.

I'm also sure the 1953 coup of democratically elected official in Iran has helped too. The constant never ending meddling in ME affairs from commerce, to currency, to elected officials, to war, etc...etc..etc...

We're Israels backbone. If we stopped supporting them, the middle east Muslim community would be at war with them, Whether or not they prevailed is another discussion.

They do not hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because we install bases on their lands, we over throw their elected officials and install dictators. We prop up dictators. We defend their sworn enemy in the region; Israel (and we do it lopsidedly at that) and we resource grab from them.

It has nothing to do with "our freedoms" (the irony being that we're not even a free society any more...not even close).

I'll start listening more seriously to all this populist OUTRAGE about drone strikes just as soon as someone proposes a viable alternative for how to take out the most dangerous threats to the safety of the world in some other way.

Until then, I'm deaf to your words.

yes.

it's stupid. I, personally, think everyone should get along in peace and love one another... but until then, drones seem to be a pretty good technology.

yep, and Clinton was a lying philanderer, and Al Gore was a boring professor... and John Kerry was a flip-flopper, and what was wrong with Michael Dukakis? I forget... some stupid thing Reagan said on TV made the simpletons in middle America laugh so he lost.

yeah, there's no way to please these people so I think we're going to quit trying.

The man in charge of America’s drone wars will face Senate questioning about perhaps their most controversial aspect: when the president can target American citizens for death.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter on Monday to John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism adviser and nominee to be head of the CIA, asking for an outline of the legal and practical rules that underpin the U.S. government’s targeted killing of American citizens suspected of working with al-Qaida. The Obama administration has repeatedly resisted disclosing any such information about its so-called “disposition matrix” targeting terrorists, especially where it concerns possible American targets. Brennan reportedly oversees that matrix from his White House perch, and would be responsible for its execution at CIA director.

“How much evidence does the President need to determine that a particular American can be lawfully killed?” Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, asks in the letter, acquired by Danger Room. “Does the President have to provide individual Americans with the opportunity to surrender before killing them?”

Wyden’s questions about the targeted-killing effort get specific. He wants to know how the administration determines when it is “not feasible” to capture American citizens suspected of terrorism; if the administration considers its authority to order such killings inherent in its Constitutional war powers or embedded in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force; and if the intelligence agencies can “carry out lethal operations inside the United States.” Wyden also expresses “surprise and dismay” that the intelligence agencies haven’t provided him with a complete list of countries in which they’ve killed people in the war on terrorism, which he says “reflects poorly on the Obama administration’s commitment to cooperation with congressional oversight.”

Thus far, senators on the intelligence panel have been more concerned about Brennan’s possible role in national-security information leaks and the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program than in using Brennan’s nomination to peer into the decision-making surrounding Obama’s counterterrorism strikes. Wyden writes that it is “critically important” for Congress to understand “how the executive branch understands the limits and boundaries of this authority.”